blown capacitor in Harbeth speaker - help

You say you hear distortion when playing very low notes - those are small speakers and can only take so much. Reverse the speaker position and see if the other one does the same thing. Also, is it only on one recording or does it happen a lot? Sometimes a bass note on a given recording just causes a speaker cabinet to react.

Assuming you determine it's broken, I would contact Fidelis, the Harbeth importer, and ask where you can have the speaker repaired. Fortunately, you don't have the M40s, which are a bit harder to ship. Good luck.

How does one "blow" a cap? Pretty hard to do I think. You would bottom-out and break the V.C. or melt it by overdriving before a modern high end crossover cap would go south. Unless it was defective to begin with. Who would overdrive and break a pair of Harbeths?? These are not L-100's in a teen's bedroom.

E Bay is a BIG joke!!

Thanks for most of the replies.

I had switched speakers and the same speaker that I had issues with displayed the same distortion. So it was definitely the speaker - not the system, which I had thought might have been the problem at the start.

I spoke to Fidelis today and they believe it's the woofer. They can replace it. Even though they are likely correct, I am going to have one other sound engineer take a look at it before shipping it to them for repair. The cost they are looking for is not that bad and the person who sold me the speakers said she would cover the repair. I just don't want to ship them again if I can have a simple repair.

Thanks for your insights. Will post when I have them sounding new again.

E, B, M!